“Wouldn’t want that to happen.”
I’m not used to hearing this kind of sarcasm in his voice. I want to go back to that night in my room, wrap those rain clouds around us like a blanket.
But this was never a wrapped-in-a-blanket kind of relationship.
“I’ve had fun with you,” I say carefully. Having fun. That’s what we said we were doing. Images flash through my mind, the two of us on the yacht and at the rage cage and in my bed with his homemade chocolate mug cake. Beneath my sheets. “Fun” isn’t the right word anymore, but it’s all I can come up with right now.
“I have too,” he says. “More than fun. I’ve had…” He breaks off, scrubs a hand through his hair. Nervous Tarek is still so foreign to me. “Jesus, Quinn. I told myself I wasn’t going to do this.”
“You weren’t going to what?”
A vigorous shake of his head, as though he’s convincing himself he’s not going to do it. “We couldn’t get it right last summer, and I know that was partly my fault. I’ve been trying to make it up to you. Trying to show you that this could be something real. And I just thought, if you changed your mind, wouldn’t it be great to have this amazing story about us?”
“Is that the only thing that would make it meaningful? Having a story like that?”
He scuffs the geometric carpet with his shoe. “I just… don’t know what else to do. How else to make it feel that way.”
Truthfully, I haven’t hated everything he’s done: the mug cake, the time we spent in the Mansour’s kitchen, the movie in the park. But I can’t bring myself to mention any of that right now.
“I never asked you to be my boyfriend. I made that clear.”
“I know. I know. And I thought I was okay with it. So it’s clearly my fault I’m feeling this way. But…” He says this next part so quietly, I have to strain to hear it. “I like you, Quinn. I like you so much.”
The words are as soft as the highest notes on the harp, the “so much” wrapping around my heart in this unexpected, unwelcome way.
I like you. He said the same thing in the tower. It’s not that most dangerous of L-words, but it’s close.
“Please don’t say that.”
“Why not? Is that really such an awful thing, to be liked?” Again, he shakes his head, and then he repeats it. “I like you. And I thought maybe you felt the same.”
There have been times I thought so too. Those shimmering, faraway-seeming ideas I pushed to the back of my mind. “For a while, I thought I could,” I say. “Last summer, I was ready to go all in with you. I even did that grand gesture of my own, with the email. Maybe it wasn’t as cinematic as anything you’ve done, but it was all I could think to do. And it didn’t work out. It always works out. In every movie you told me to watch. I watched them all, Tarek. And—and it always works out.” I squeeze my eyes shut. When people cry in romantic comedies, it’s only because they’re guaranteed a happy ending afterward.
“But it can,” he says. “That’s what I’m telling you. We can figure this out together.” He reaches out, twines his fingers with mine, and for a moment it sounds like something I might be able to say yes to. That’s how ingrained romantic gestures are for him—they’ve made me question what I really want.
“There’s nothing to figure out.”
That’s all it takes for him to draw his hand back. “Okay. Let me get this straight, then. You wanted me to comfort you, but you don’t want a relationship. You tell me I make you happy, but you don’t want me to be your boyfriend. You want all the perks of a relationship without the actual commitment, because god forbid you let someone hold your hand or open a door for you.”
“Tarek…”
“I’m not wrong, am I?”
He is. He’s so incredibly wrong, but I’m losing the will to defend myself.
“If relationships are so great, why haven’t your other ones worked out?” It’s a low blow. “You made them seem so perfect on Instagram, but those gestures—were they one-sided? What did your girlfriends ever do for you in return? And what was your record? Three months?”
“You can’t call it a record,” he says. He has every right to be angry with me, but he’s soft, so soft, the way he always is, and that’s what makes his words cut even deeper. I can feel how badly he wants this like it’s a living, breathing thing in the hall with us. “It’s not some competition. Maybe… Maybe I’m not good at relationships without the flashy stuff. Maybe I’m still trying to figure out how, exactly, to navigate that. But I’m good with you.”
The fact that he’s still so invested in us when I am clearly upsetting him is further proof of what I’ve believed for so long. I was scared of us hurting each other, but the truth? We already are.
I have done so much more damage than I thought possible.
As though it’ll make me more confident in what I’m about to say, I straighten my posture, though the wall is still holding me up. “Fine. Here’s the real reason I don’t want to be in a relationship with you. The reason I can’t. It’s because the last time we got close, the closest we’d ever been, you hurt me. And I know I hurt you too—that I hurt you first—before that. I know we’ve apologized. I thought we’d moved past it, that I was over it, but even if I’m not actively hurting every moment
